The King and the Rook
by Windcage
Summary: The Empire lies in ruins, its cities turned to rumble, its Armada gone. Following Phasma and Hux's journey from childhood to adulthood, this is a collection of short-stories that tells how a scared boy from Arkanis and a child-soldier from Eriadu rose to lead the Empire's last bid for survival. Can be read individually. [Part of the Castling Series, Leads to Redemption]


**Prologue**

The star charts had arrived that very day. The unstable connection that had resulted in the first two attempts failure had finally remained online long enough for the transmission to be possible.

If Rae Sloane was expecting a calmer ending to the navigational nightmare the _Imperialis_ journey had proven to be up to this point, she had rapidly discovered herself sadly mistaken. Not even her nightmares could have conjured what she was up against. In fact, sitting on her quarters, her work desk light flickering above her as she tried to trace a safe course through what she could only describe as hell, Sloane was beginning to wish she could make herself acquainted with the scout team that had first mapped the region. If to salute them or having them flushed out of an airlock she could not tell. It truly depended if the names embellishing the map had come from the minds of a group of optimistic dreamers or if a band of jerks had poured a particularly ironic of humor all over the chart.

 _Cradle._ That was what the Imperial scouts that had mapped this region for the first time had called the area surrounding their base. Cradle. From her vantage point—watching the course of solar eruptions blasting through the region, the high radiation readings and all kinds of navigational hazards that, while making for particularly clever defense system, threatened to rip right through her warship's shields and fry its systems—she was rather sure this was more like a grave than a cradle.

"Can you find a way?"

The query, in a child's voice, was the same she had been putting herself for hours. Considerations about the ships on her convoy, their shields and the way they would behave under stress had filled pages without her reaching enough conclusions or, at least, those a navigator with her experience was expected to achieve. That the last part of their journey would have to be broken in several light speed jumps went without saying. But to come to terms with fact that what little of her fleet had not crashed into Jakku risked becoming stranded on this side of the nebula, unable to make its way across, was hard to swallow.

Sighing, attention going from her calculations to the ceiling, Sloane pressed her eyes, the pain twisting in her side making her groan. Around her the violent hammering of the electromagnetic storm hitting the _Imperialis_ shields seemed about to rip the vessel apart. The moaning of the superstructure, the lights flickering, the buzzing filling the corridors as the reactor fought to maintain the systems functional, merged into this menacing growl that filled every single corner of the warship.

Taken by curiosity, Sloane glanced at the label embellishing the chart.

 _Howling Death._

She truly would have to have a word with these people. It was enough having death knocking on the shields without having the map pushing it down their throats.

If this was unpleasant to her, however, she truly couldn't imagine how terrifying it must feel to the child curled up on her bed, one hand firmly closed around the white sheet.

"Rough patch," Sloane told him, head resting against the back of the chair, eyes going back to the flickering ceiling light. "We will be through it in some minutes."

No answer. She was not deceived though. He was not sleeping. He was crying. And that the latter could pass for the former, that he did not make any sound, had long ceased to baffle her. Now she felt only disturbed. Disturbed and revolted. This certainty she had not beat Brendol Hux as thoroughly as she should have—and not at all for the right reasons—giving way to an overwhelming desire to step out the door and correct that mistake right now.

She would have done so—she should have done so—if it wasn't for what she could feel at her side.

Grief.

For whom she did not know or wished to know. Yet, she had just to stretch her arm to reach him. She could scope him out of the bed as easily as she had picked him off the floor. He was small for his age, light, not much of a burden. More importantly she liked him. There was steel under this frailty, that particular brand of viciousness that made for good officers ready to give it its edge. He reminded her of—

Her chest ached. Pain shooting up her ribs. The bitter taste of betrayal and sorrow in her tongue.

Adea.

And she couldn't move. She couldn't risk it. Something had broken inside her she hadn't even know she possessed and left her fingers hovering just centimeters over the strands of red hair, unable to close the distance between them and in retreating, falling to her own pain, only widening it.

"Know anything about star charts?" Her voice was close to being drown by the _Imperialis_ groaning, yet the child curled on her bead turned, giving her a short head shake. It only made the knife on her side twist further. "Interested?"

It felt like cowardice this. To watch as he rubbed his eyes. To pretend she couldn't see the trails of tears still on his face as he pulled himself to the side of the table. To lock heads over the star charts and radiation readings and shield penetration rates. To flee.

She had called these people to her vision. A chance to start anew. But she had meant for a different beginning. She had set out with a vision, one in which they rose from the ashes of a failed regime strengthen in their resolve and purged from its mistakes. They had braved the purgatory already. So why— _why_ was there still so much grief?


End file.
